Oc­to­ber dead­line for Pen­wood re­sults

SOME OF the 40 Pen­wood High stu­dents af­fected by the school­based as­sess­ment (SBA) saga say they are very happy that the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil (CXC) has given a firm dead­line on when they could get re­sults in six Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate sub­jects.

CXC is­sued a state­ment yes­ter­day con­firm­ing the re­ports car­ried ear­lier that the stu­dents will be graded, while giv­ing a firm dead­line.

“Re­cently sub­mit­ted pro­jects are be­ing marked and the up­dated re­sults will be pro­vided by the end of Oc­to­ber, which is the nor­mal time for the re­lease of fi­nal re­sults,” CXC said in a state­ment after a high-level meet­ing held be­tween Ja­maican au­thor­i­ties and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the exam body last week.

One stu­dent, Sophia Thomp­son, said she was happy to learn of the news.

The par­ent of an­other stu­dent, who wished not to be named, said she was pleased and noted that it has been a dif­fi­cult pe­riod.

“I am re­ally look­ing for­ward to the re­sults. It’s been wait­ing a long time,” she told The Gleaner.

The stu­dents re­ceived un­graded scores in the sub­jects in Au­gust after school au­thor­i­ties failed to sub­mit sam­ples of their SBAs by a July 31 dead­line.

AM­I­CA­BLE AGREE­MENT

The CXC ini­tially re­fused to con­sider Pen­wood’s case, but Ja­maica lob­bied and even threat­ened to re­view its re­la­tion­ship if the re­sponse was not favourable.

Last week’s meet­ing be­tween Ja­maica and CXC was the lat­est to con­sider the sit­u­a­tion brought to na­tional at­ten­tion by an Au­gust 25 Gleaner re­port.

“The Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil and the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, Youth and In­for­ma­tion, Ja­maica have reached an am­i­ca­ble agree­ment as it re­lates to re­cent is­sues re­gard­ing ex­am­i­na­tion and specif­i­cally sur­round­ing the Pen­wood case,” the state­ment read.

“Both en­ti­ties gave com­mit­ments to im­prove com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween the or­gan­i­sa­tions as well as to strength­en­ing the ex­ist­ing work­ing re­la­tion­ship. They reaf­firmed that, as the lead­ing re­gional ex­am­i­na­tions body, the in­tegrity of CXC cer­ti­fi­ca­tions must be up­held as they work to­gether to serve the learn­ers of the re­gion.”